Page 54 of Skating the Blue Line
I let out a sigh and go through my entire catalog of thoughts and dilemmas that I’ve had over the last week.
“It's a lot.” I tell her, throwing myself along my couch.
“I have time, your dad is still at work,” she tells me. “Tell me.”
Why do I feel like I took a trip to my therapist office instead of my mom?
Either way, I tell her.
“When the doctor told me, I got scared. You know how important dance is to me. You know all the hard work I put in to get where I am. All the sweat, tears, and injuries I suffered through so that I can even be considered for any dance company. I wanted to be a ballerina for so long that the second she told me I was pregnant, I saw everything I worked so hard for start to vanish. It didn’t help that I had told myself that I wasn’t going to get into a relationship, that I was going to concentrate on dance and dance alone. So when she told me, I started to freak out.”
I sink deeper into the couch, feeling the urge to cry as I tell my mom everything.
“You thought that if you were pregnant, you would have to give up dancing and possibly never be able to wear your pointe shoes again.”
I nod.
Ding, ding, ding. My mom has a winner.
“Yeah. I knew I wanted to be a mom, but there were moments in the last week where I wanted to be a dancer more. I kept telling myself that I was at my peak and I couldn’t give that up. I couldn’t walk away weeks after having the best performance of my life. I needed to choose dancing and then maybe in a few years I can revisit the whole mom thing.”
Stupid tears betray me and escape. If my mom and I were on FaceTime she would be seeing my mocos go everywhere.
“What changed? Did something happen that made you shift your perspective?” she asks.
Now I really am in a therapy session.
I sniffle. “Yeah.”
“What?”
Without even trying, my mind goes to two days ago.
I was at my morning rehearsal with a few other company dancers, going through a small number that was added to our Christmas program. The routine itself was simple and something that most of us could do in our sleep. What wasn’t simple was one of the lifts that our choreographer decided to add that day.
It was an overhead lift, something we do all the time, but for some reason that day, the lift was off.
Someone’s hand placement was off and the choreographer lost control, causing both him and the female dancer he was lifting to fall to the ground.
The girl ended up going to the ER with a broken collarbone, two broken ribs and a broken arm.
She’s out for at least the first half of the winter season.
“Someone got hurt a few days ago. She’s out until at least December.” I say, remembering the way her arm was bent.
“And seeing her like that scared you too.” I can practically hear my mom nodding on the other side.
“It did. It reminded me that I can get hurt tomorrow and never be able to wear my pointe shoes again. That’s when I started to think that maybe I can keep the baby and still dance. Betty does it, so do a number of girls at the company. If they can do it, I can too.”
Saying everything out loud cements my decision.
I’m really going to do it.
I’m really going to be a mom and a dancer.
“And the dad? Is he going to be involved? Does he know?”
My mom loves to ask the hard questions, doesn’t she?
